Think about all of the services you use on your phone. Email, social networking, photo sharing, news, todo lists, calendars and much more. Forget games, phone calls and text messages, and it’s likely that the vast majority of what you use your phone for involves being online. Yet the chances are that as soon as you start using a new tool you immediately seek out an app. But is this necessary?

In most cases, where there is a web-based tool that has an app, there is also a mobile website. So why do we all gravitate towards apps? It’s something I know that I am guilty of and that I don’t usually give a great deal of thought to. Apps are where it’s at for me. It’s been that way for some time, but I thought it was about time to re-evaluate the situation.

The new version of Android, KitKat, is very different from previous ones in that it requires less processing power to run. This means that cheaper devices or legacy Android phones will be able to update to a new, shiny OS for free. This might seem like a bold move by Google to protect their operating system’s market share, but in reality, it means so much more.

It means that “The Next Billion”, those who will become smartphone users in the years 2014/15, will stand a greater chance of owning an Android device. As these future droid fans are from the developing nations with different cultures and socio-economic background, their smartphone usage diverges vastly from consumers in western, developed nations.

Furthermore, their lives will be fundamentally changed by the incumbent smartphone ownership. Far more than being just a status symbol or the latest gadget, a $150 device could change a person’s path in life, increase their economic power and free them from oppression or poverty. Here’s how KitKat will kickstart this change.

The 7 inch tablet market is probably the fastest growing in the mobile arena. While phone manufacturers are still experimenting with all manners of sizes for handset screens, there seems to be a general consensus that for a tablet, 7 inches is the sweet spot. Larger tablets are still popular, but for the most part, 7 is where it’s at.

I was recently alerted to the existence of the GOCLEVER Aries 7o. Yes, you read that correctly. That’s a fully capitalized company name followed by a mode name incorporating a sign of the zodiac, and then a number and a letter. Yep, that’s seven oh, not seven zero. But that’s by the by. Having just taken ownership of a Nexus 7, I was keen to see how it compared.

Wearable technology is tipped to be the next big thing and so naturally Google, who never likes to lack in the innovation department, is seemingly getting ready to enter the incredibly young market head-first using Android.

Android’s version 4.4, KitKat, was just recently announced and the long list of under-the-hood internals are sure to please Android users everywhere. But amongst this long list of enhancements, certain features stand out to me for the reason that they are the exact type of improvements or additions that a wearable device needs, and would benefit greatly from. This is what leads me to believe that in the coming months we will see Google disrupting the wearable market like no other company can. But what will we see from them? I’ve done my best to decrypt the hints left in Android KitKat to find out!

Coming out to either support or attack an operating system, company or piece of hardware almost inevitably leads to accusations of fanboyism. My choice of headline here may make it sound as though I’m on the attack, going out for Microsoft all gun blazing… But that’s not the case.

While this is an Android site and I spend a huge amount of my time playing with Android apps, tablets and smartphones, I actually spend the vast majority of my time using — ironically — a first generation Surface Pro… and I love it. So I’ll preface this article by saying that I love Android, and I love Windows and the Surface platform. But I’m not foolish enough to think that Surface will ever overtake Android — or even become its equal. Why? There are various reasons.

As fate would have it, I won the LG G2 at the launch event in my country, and I have been using it for over two weeks as my main device. The screen, the camera, the battery life, the processor and speed,… everything about the phone is mightily impressive and the best of Android at the moment — and probably for months to come. But I’m not the first person to say that.

The opinion discordance comes into play when you mention LG’s Android skin, with some reviews calling it the G2’s Achilles heel. For as many mobile enthusiasts who appreciate this skin, there is an equal amount who dislike it and I have seen it described with a lot of colorful adjectives from “a poor man’s Touchwiz” to “cartoony”, “rainbow-like”, “tacky”… So for once, I would like to dispel the misconceptions about this topic. Join me after the break as I tell you why you shouldn’t dismiss LG’s Android skin so quickly.

When Apple introduced the first-generation iPad in 2010, Android manufacturers were fairly slow to respond. Android 3.0 Honeycomb was Google’s first official tablet-oriented variant of their operating system, releasing a year later as a rushed product to power the Motorola Xoom. It wasn’t until mid-2012 that Google took Apple head on with their own first-party tablet, the Nexus 7, shortly followed up by the 10-inch Nexus 10.

Now, almost four years after Apple’s initial announcement, the Cupertino company has revealed their lineup for the 2013 holiday season: the 7.9-inch iPad mini with Retina Display and 9.7-inch iPad Air. In this article, we’re going to take a look at what the tablets are about and just how it stacks up against the Android competition. (more…)

If you have spent any time online over the past few months, you can’t help but have become aware of the Nexus 7. Even if you weren’t actively seeking out information about the device, you’ve probably absorbed a great deal as if by osmosis.

The latest addition to the Google / Asus Nexus range has been eagerly anticipated for some time now. Taking a leaf out of Apple’s book, the latest version of the Nexus 7 was not given a unique name. Just as the iPad 3 was not actually called the iPad 3, rather, the ‘new iPad’, so there is nothing in the name to distinguish this Nexus from last year’s model if you just look at the name.

I’m really absurdly picky about my Twitter experience, and Twitter’s app has never quite done it for me. I want access to a couple of different Twitter accounts, and I want the myriad of features that most AppStorm authors have probably begged for.

But what I really want is a beautiful Holo-themed design that’s both simple enough to immediately grasp and interesting enough to pleasantly surprise me with its intricacies. On iOS, I like apps like Tweetbot or Twitterrific. On Android, I originally liked Falcon Pro. The community treated it like the second coming and everybody got it, so now it’s degenerated to a terrible user experience and a fight to make it work. I searched for another client for a while, and finally found Carbon.

We’ve all been awaiting Key Lime Pie with baited breath, but Google’s once again surprised us with an incremental update to Android. 4.3, which is still called Jelly Bean and largely keeps the same interface we’ve all grown to know and love.

That being said, while 4.3 is an incremental update, it’s also an important one. Google’s bringing some much-needed features to Android that will make life easier for both OEMs like Samsung and HTC as well as average users. Read on to find out about some of the features that most excite us about Android 4.3.